speechless .

i believe with all my heart that The Lord is a romantic . it is not only what He says of Himself but also the reality i live with Him every day .  admittedly , there are days in which i fail to see the romance , but His grace and mercy , unbound by time , are ceaselessly faithful to eventually unveil my blinded eyes , overwhelming my heart and flooding me all the more .

i never didn't want to go to waco . i had actually been accepted into the school back in april but for the time being , disappointedly , i had turned it down . i didn't understand . i had applied several months in advance with confidence and what i believed to be confirmation to do so .   with the press of the ' submit ' button my wild imagination , paired with a cavernous time of waiting , took up quick residence and my dreams ran away with me .

i had plans .
big ones .
grandiose ones . . .[[ i have a theory about this later . hold on to this unfinished thought . ]]

fast forward . 

the call hadn't come yet but there was a sinking , unsettled feeling in my heart .
i wasn't going to waco . that confidence and confirmation had come up with a different conclusion ; an ending i wasn't so excited about but the one that came with peace .

the call came . obedience isn't always easy and or pain free . i turned it down leaving my application filed as ' no ' with an open invitation to be refiled as otherwise . [[ part two of soon to be mentioned theory . hold on to this one too ]]

when i am presented with my ' next steps options ' i worry and weigh and improvise the outcome of each situation . i am not a logistics person but i try to think through them . i fantasize myself in each scenario [ undoubtedly completely unrealistically ] and after all of this hard work , typically , come up with nothing . . besides more exasperation than i began with .

i've boiled it down to one question and am practicing coming to it more quickly , side stepping above mentioned exasperation . the question is this ::

which requires more faith . . in this case . . to stay or to go ??

in april , it was blatantly to stay .

fast forward . 

i , not so coincidentally , ended up at a prayer and worship night at a church an hour away that i had never been to . the service started , the Holy Spirit was invited , and oh did He move . i lost myself in Him , walking out of that place ninety minutes later in somewhat of a daze ; a fog ; it was as if i had come down from the clouds . i have yet to come up with an adequate description of what it was i was feeling but it was disorienting . it doesn't matter what it felt like though because i knew what it was . it was Him . His Presence .

He had found me and enveloped me as i sat alone among strangers in the most inconspicuous of places , where moments before i had sat in the parking lot debating whether or not to go in .

i journaled . i cried . i laughed . i sat still . i soaked it in and on the drive home i celebrated .

i was going to waco .

now , i know i'm not the only one thinking The Lord is looking a bit bipolar and indecisive right now . cue the soon to follow meltdown of  ' what am i doing?! i don't hear the lord (( how's that for discouragement and the pit of despair )) ?!  He's not supposed to change His mind ?! i don't deserve to go to waco ?! ' 

and the ever faithful inevitable finale of . . .
' IM GOING TO DIE '

baby fast forward.

a . i hear The Lord (( and so do you for that matter ))
b . He does not change His mind or contradict Himself .
c . deserve?  revisit grace . . moot point .  &
d . i'm obviously still alive so we won't even worry about addressing that one . . leave a comment if you have any questions there .


i think we can all agree that it is very obvious He is not the bipolar indecisive one and that those two qualities blatantly belong to me .

i was always going to waco .
[[ pause . go grab those two unfinished thoughts i left you with before ]]
this whole process was about exactly that . . the process . the journey . those grandiose dreams ? they had taken His hands off of the plan and went to work replacing them my own messy finger prints .
My Father loves to dream . He loves to dream even more than i do and is capable of even bigger ones than my imagination could ever even dare  . in His dreaming , He created me , and invited me along to do it with Him .
i got ahead of myself and started doing it without Him . what does that do ? it leaves Him out consequently shrinking and limiting my dreams which is unsatisfying to Him .
that romance ? i could have argued with you kicking , screaming , moping , and crying , that it just wasn't there the day i turned my acceptance down .
thankfully i didn't because that brings us to the ' eventually ' . the eventually is not on His part but mine , the grace is that He willingly sticks out the ' eventually ' anticipating that ' ohhhhhhhhh , thaat's what You were doing . ' moment with all the rosiness of my cheeks as they sheepishly blush in the humbling reappointing Him to the throne and getting my butt off of it .

I took waco from Him and all He wanted to do was give it to me . He wanted to give me a gift in all of it's fullness , in all of His glory , in all of His love .
He never changed His mind , but there was more going on than the decision of whether or not to go to Waco .
it wasn't right or wrong .
it wasn't life or death .

it was , every step of the way , every piece of the puzzle , every unfinished thought and moment of feeling forgotten , for the sake of sweeping me off my feet .

it is now those moments that felt forsaken that i look back and know i was ' most ' intimately and vulnerably seen .
provided for .
carried .
held .

this adventure is now the invitation it was always meant to be ,

 come away with me . . [ mark 6:31 ]

let me show you just how big i love you . 

He loves to see me speechless ,

and Lord knows He's the only one capable of getting me that way .

worship whimsy & wild .

people have , often in my life , told me that i am brave .

i have always , for the most part quietly , disagreed .

" i'm only brave because i have to be "

name that movie ? anyone ? caroline ? that's my sister . . we play this game a lot. for future reference ? mulan is usually a pretty safe bet . . i would , of course , start with an exception .

it's the lion king . pretend you knew , even if you didn't .

anyways .

i've been faced with plenty of reason to be forcedly brave , although , i suppose i didn't have to be but they are those kinds of situations where the option isn't really an option , you know ?

to be brutally honest , i think that sometimes - most of the time - every time ? - feigning bravery sounded worse than fear and i believed i deserved the worst , so bravery it was .

as there are exceptions with the movie game , there are a select few instances i'll take the silver star . . it is silver . gallant . i googled it .

i've always been a sucker for the comparison game though so on second thought , (or are we at third . . fifth . . seventh ?) , if you were to hold the "actually" brave up against the "faking it" brave . . they wouldn't seem too consequential in my opinion and would lose all their merit . disqualified . back to square one .

can you tell i carry an impressively dominant indecissive gene ? i was born without any dna for balance . . and a few other things . . so Indecisive was kind enough to spread itself out and make itself comfortable to make up for what was missing .

my mom also says i'm an introvert . . an 'outgoing introvert' . . but i have this theory . i think my brother would agree that i'm actually (at least) 2 different people . . but not in the clinically diagnosable sense . . my external self is an introvert . all up inside of me though ? extrovert . all the way . we're in our first post and it's already ringing true to you too . . i am an extremely internal extrovert all bound and wound up within my own self .  the 'outgoing introvert' is where the two intermingle .

nailed it . it's exhausting .

i'm exhausting . i'm aware .

bare with me .

it's fine .

anyways (did i already say that once ? wrap it up here girlfriend . . okay. yes. we've got this . . did i just say 'we?!')

the point is.  i am about to brave . because i want to be . and because i'm worth it .

it turns out that all of those times i 'punished' myself faking it ? when the choices were

' 1. take my own life or

2. suffer through it at the hands of others . . choose the most miserable option . ' and i was convinced that option was 2 ??

i was wrong . so very . very . wrong .

if there were stars for hating yourself , i would have earned them all .

it turns out 1. would have been the worst option all along .

if you're one of those who have a hard time admitting your wrong , try that one on for size . (but don't actually , just take my word for it) it becomes a whole lot easier to admit you're wrong when you realize being right would have left you dead about 97 times over .

the point is , i have not been brave . i have been afraid but all along there has been Someone loving me greater than i hated myself and my fear of other people .

He has not let me ruin my own life. i tried . i got tired of it .

He can sustain Himself much longer than i can so rather than resist Him i started going with Him .

i'm headed into an adventure and i'd like you to come with me .

in two weeks i will be packing up my car , loading up a uhaul , and headed to waco , texas to attend Antioch Community Church Discipleship School .

i have hopes and dreams , visions and promises covering the next year . i have spent far too much of my life in hiding , enslaved to one of secrecy and lies , but i've come to the light and found The One whom my Soul loves ( Sol. 3:4 ) and His glory begs , even demands , to be seen .

this is my year . this is Our year .

a beginning that has no end .

this is life .

it is worship . .

    it is whimsy . .

         
        and it is wild .